Creating value through governing IT deployment in a public/private-sector inter-organisational context: a human agency perspective

Harnessing value from Information Technology (IT) has long been a focus of research, but evidence is lacking about how effective practice of Information Technology Governance (ITG) contributes to creating value for stakeholders in inter‐organisational contexts. This is especially so for public/private sector partnerships. In this study we used ISO/IEC 38500:2008, the corporate governance of IT standard, to direct analysis of how ITG was practised in deployment of a large IT project in an inter‐organisational public/private sector context. The findings demonstrate that ITG strategies related to human agency contribute to the realisation of value for participating stakeholders, particularly through pre‐emptive stakeholder participation in evaluating IT functionality of the old system and iteratively in deployment of the new system. Further, our investigation shows that ISO/IEC 38500:2008 has merit as an analytical framework to objectively evaluate corporate governance of IT, although there is need for some enhancement.